Persimmon talks up year-to-date performance

Persimmon updated the market on its year-to-date operations on Thursday morning, ahead of its annual general meeting in York at midday.

The FTSE 100 housebuilding firm said consumer confidence is being supported by the continued progress made by the UK economy, and that it remains focused on delivering family housing across the UK - excluding central London - to meet the continued demand for new homes at affordable prices.

Persimmon claimed it brought forward a healthy order book into 2016, with its strong sales performance over the period resulting in total forward sales revenue - including legal completions taken so far in 2016 - being 8% higher than the prior year at £2.15bn.

Its weekly private sales rate per site over the period was 6% ahead of the previous year.

“We have 7,598 homes sold forward into the private sale market for 2016 with an average selling price of £220,000, an increase of 5.8% over the prior year.”

Persimmon said it was currently developing 370 “active outlets” across the country, having opened 75 of the 100 new sites planned for the first half of the year.

It continued to build homes on all sites where an implementable detailed planning consent had been secured.

The board said planning delays continued to erode the total number of active outlets being developed by the industry, hindering its drive to increase the number of newly built homes delivered to the market.

“We are working hard to increase our active outlet numbers towards 400 by the end of 2016, and will continue to focus on increasing our output to meet market demand.

“The group has continued to invest in high quality new land to support its future growth,” the board said.

Persimmon also confirmed it had concluded an amendment of its £300m revolving credit facility with its five relationship banks, extending its maturity date to 31 March 2021.

“Since the launch of the new strategy in early 2012 the group has delivered a 56% increase in new homes completed, invested over £2.2bn in new land, and opened 812 new development sites.

“We have also returned a total of £1.071bn of surplus capital to shareholders - over £550m higher than was originally planned.”